Robert A. Rushing

“TUTTO È ZUPPA!”: MAKING THE SUPEREGO ENJOY IN CALVINO’S IL CAVALIERE INESISTENTE

The Hollow Epic Il cavaliere inesistente [The Nonexistent ] tells the story of Agilulfo, one of the Emperor ’s most dedicated . He is scrupulous in all things, from the procedures and rules governing combat to the polishing of his armor. It is, in fact, his armor that particularly attracts the Emperor’s attention. It is completely unscratched or marred in any way and covers Agil- ulfo from head to toe—no space, no matter how small, is left uncovered. It is also perfectly white, except for a thin black line that runs around the edge. In other words, it is an outline, a tracing of a knight more than an actual knight as such. Agilulfo’s shield is rather curious as well. It depicts a cloak whose sides have been pulled open to reveal another cloak, whose sides have been pulled open to reveal another cloak, whose—in short, it is the fgure known as a mise en abyme, the endlessly recursive image of a container that contains itself and so contains ultimately nothing. The question of content, in short, is always deferred to a later date, farther down. If Charlemagne is struck by Agilulfo’s armor, he is decidedly more struck when he fnally convinces the reluctant knight to open his helmet: there is nothing inside. Agilulfo, the nonexistent knight, is merely a suit of armor animated by, as he says to the Emperor, “la forza di volontà . . . e la fede nella nostra santa causa” [strength of will and faith in our holy cause!].1 We can see immediately some of the uses to which Calvino might (and generally does) put this fgure. In the meta- literary vein, Agilulfo represents a kind of pure formalism, a temptation that Calvino was certainly drawn to throughout his career, as a number of critics have pointed out.2 Surely this hollowed out form, evacuated of content,

1. Italo Calvino, Il cavaliere inesistente in Romanzi e racconti, vol. 1 (Milan: Monda- dori, 1991) 958. Further references will be given in the text. 2. Isn’t this precisely what Calvino has understood so well about Ariosto, that Or- lando furioso is effectively an empty (delightful, magnifcent) formalism? The space of the poem functions like a game board, where the individual pieces have no individual

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also speaks to what happens to the epic in the modern era, where it becomes a genre that can no longer be taken seriously; it survives more as a generic memory, a space that can no longer contain anything. Certainly Calvino’s knight speaks as well to a certain loss of idealism, a desire for “strength of will and faith in our holy cause” that is no longer credible in an age of cynicism. What emerges from this overview is that Agilulfo appears as a fgure of nos- talgia; he is fundamentally anachronistic and out of place. This is particularly true for the other knights within the novel, for whom Agilulfo is “certo un modello di soldato; ma a tutti . . . antipatico” (Calvino 959) [certainly a model soldier; but disliked by all]. Under this view, the novel appears like a version of or an homage to Don Quixote: the tragicomic failure of idealism in a modern era of unabated cyni- cism and the concomitant impossibility of a serious (i.e., nonparodic) treat- ment of the epic and of the chivalric epic in particular. Such a view of the novel is bolstered by the various Quixotic elements of the text: Agilulfo’s irritating and impractical insistence on the laws of chivalry and codes of knightly behav- ior; his ridiculous squire who is, like Sancho Panza, rather more interested in the pleasures of the body than knightly virtue; the ironic and self-conscious narrator who is eventually enfolded into the narrative; the protagonist moti- vated by an absurd raison d’être and who effectively disintegrates when that reason is taken away, and so on. If it was not possible to take the ideals of chivalric literature (say, furioso) seriously at the beginning of the sev- enteenth century, it is surely impossible in the middle of the twentieth century. This is not quite, however, the story that Calvino’s novel tells. Agilulfo is not a marginalized and mocked fgure because he clings to outmoded ideals or an outmoded literary genre. In fact, it is often precisely the reverse: as they

character; the spirit of the game resides in their continuous shifting from one space to another, their constant reconfguration. It is irrelevant whether we are talking about a magic horn, a magic ring, or a magic sword or helmet—what matters is that the objects be continuously exchanged among all the characters. Likewise, what matters the romance between two characters? What is important is that every romantic at- tachment be dissolved by a magic fountain, changed to hatred, then back into love, then love for another, and so on. As to Calvino’s penchant for pure formalism, crit- ics as diverse as Guido Almansi (“Il mondo binario di Italo Calvino,” Paragone 258 (1971): 95–110), Paolo Briganti (“La vocazione combinatoria di Italo Calvino,” Studi e problemi di critica testuale 24 (1982): 199–225), Simona Wright (“Italo Calvino e la ricerca dell’ordine nella molteplicità,” Italian Quarterly 129 (1996): 59–76), Simonetta Noé (“La parola ordinatrice: Italo Calvino da ‘Le cosmicomiche’ a ‘Le città invisibili’” Il cristallo 1 (1982): 79–98), and Grazia Bravetti (“Italo Calvino: dal ‘labirinto’ alla ricerca dell’ordine nella ragione,” Il cristallo 3 (1983): 63–70) have all made this point.

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sit around the table at the end of the day, it is the other knights who tell epic stories of adventure, such as the following:

Dice Orlando: – Devo dire che la battaglia d’Aspromonte si stava mettendo male, prima che io non abbattessi in duello il re Agolante e gli prendessi la Durlindana. C’era tanto attaccato che quando gli troncai di netto il braccio destro, il suo pugno restò stretto all’elsa di Durlindana e dovetti usare le tenaglie per staccarlo. (Calvino 1012)

Orlando speaks: “I have to say that the battle of Aspromonte was going pretty bad, before I beat King in a duel and took the sword Durlindana from him. He was so attached to it that when I chopped off his right arm in one blow, his fst stayed tight around Durlindana’s hilt, and I had to use pliers to get it off!”

Agilulfo fails to properly respond to these epic tales. He fails to respond in a similarly epic key with, say, an attempt to out- do Orlando’s story of impressive deeds or a humorous put-down aimed at Orlando. What Agilulfo is mocked, even detested for, is a very different kind of response to the epic magnitude of Orlando’s claim:

E Agilulfo: – Non per smentirti, ma esattezza vuole che Durlin- dana fosse consegnata dai nemici nelle trattative d’armistizio cin- que giorni dopo la battaglia d’Aspromonte. Essa fgura infatti in un elenco d’armi leggere cedute all’esercito franco, tra le condizioni del trattato. (Calvino 1012)

And Agilulfo: “Not to contradict you, but exactitude requires that we specify that Durlindana was consigned by our enemies in the armistice negotiations fve days after the battle of Aspromonte. Indeed, it is numbered among a list of light arms ceded to the army of the Franks, among the conditions of the treaty.”

It is true that the epic tone has vanished from both interlocutors. Orlando’s speech is devoid of noble rhetoric, from his casual “it was going pretty bad” to his amusingly crude use of pliers to remove the amputated fst of King Agolant. Agilulfo’s discourse, on the contrary, while “higher,” is also in entirely bureaucratic language, in the particularly horrible Italian way that an English translation can only aspire to (Calvino loathingly referred to this kind of Italian as “anti- language,” and it is Agilulfo’s natural, although not exclusive,

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register in the novel).3 Nonetheless, Orlando still holds out the promise of great deeds, epic battles, heroism—epic magnitude if not epic quality. He may not be able to speak the language of the epic, and he may not even “really” believe in it anymore, but he certainly still enjoys it. Agilulfo, however, acts as the superego, an irritating censor, constantly seeking out mistakes, inaccura- cies, contradictions, always bringing to light the exaggerations of his com- rades, always exposing their stories as pretentious and empty boasts. Agilulfo’s function, what exposes him to the dislike and mockery of his companions, is to deprive the other knights of their enjoyment. What Agilulfo clings to, in other words, is not an outmoded literary genre or even anything so noble as ideals. When I mentioned before Agilulfo’s irritating and impractical insistence on the laws of chivalry, the key is that this insis- tence is not “impractical” as it is in the Quixote, where such codes typically impede forward movement of the plot or deny them some material gain—on the contrary, Agilulfo’s prohibitions and regulations make perfect sense (as, for instance, the conventions surrounding combat and revenge, which aim at a bureaucratization of war). Agilulfo is anachronistic because he continues to act as a censor, as an agent of prohibition—specifcally the prohibition of enjoyment—in an age in which unrestrained enjoyment becomes the para- mount value. I refer here not to the age in which the action of the novel is set, but to the period of its composition and publication, the late 1950s, precisely as Italy is defnitively leaving behind its traditional agricultural culture of hier- archy and prohibition in favor of a modern industrial and capitalist society in which the consumer’s enjoyment becomes paramount. I will explore the passage from a culture of prohibition to a culture of enjoyment in detail in the next section, but I want to note that what is truly remarkable about The Non- existent Knight is not merely the way that it dramatizes the confict between Agilulfo’s censorship and prohibition and the other knights’ desire to enjoy, but the fact that the solution that the knights arrive at is precisely the same one that modern capitalist society arrives at: fnd some way to enjoy the superego.

The Obscene Reverse of the Law In The End of Dissatisfaction? Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment, Todd McGowan offers a smart account of a historical vision that underlies much of the New Lacanian work on culture.4 The argument might be reduced simply to this: traditionally, society has been organized on

3. See Italo Calvino, “L’antilingua,” Saggi (Milan: Mondadori, 1995) 154–59. 4. Albany: State U of New York P, 2003. References will be given in the text. “New Lacanian” may be understood broadly as that group of thinkers such as Copjec and Žižek who were inspired by Lacan’s late work. While the previous generation of Laca- nians had emphasized the symbolic and imaginary (especially through Lacan’s now

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the principle of prohibition; increasingly, especially as we move into post- industrial modes of production, it is organized on the principle of enjoyment. I will explore the argument in more depth below, but it is worth noting at the outset an example that gives the general sense of what “society of enjoyment” might mean—and naturally, the principal example will be America. Consider that a major American response to the attacks of September 11, 2001 was not to prohibit and restrict ordinary life (curfews, for example, or ration- ing), but to insist that altering normal patterns of behavior was tantamount to “letting the terrorists win”—in particular, the response was an injunction not to restraint and austerity, but to excess: a call for Americans to spend money, to enjoy themselves like never before (and one should keep in mind that the specifc forms of spending that were encouraged included dining out at restaurants, taking vacations, staying in hotels, and purchasing expensive goods, both luxury goods and durable goods). This, of course, presents a stark contrast to earlier wars and national traumas that emphasized austerity and sacrifce (food coupons, sugar and meat rationing) and in which spending was to be directed altruistically and sacrifcially (war bonds, care packages for soldiers). There are three things to note about this response to September 11th, however, besides the way that it exemplifes a turn from prohibition and austerity to narcissistic enjoyment. First, it takes the form of an injunction: you must enjoy. It is your duty to enjoy. In other words, the phrase “society of enjoyment” does not indicate a kind of orgiastic and permissive free-for- all. It points rather toward the duty or obligation to enjoy. Second, the demand for citizens to enjoy after September 11th did not preclude a series of measures that were fundamentally inquisitive and regulatory (greatly expanded powers of surveillance, establishment of databases of personal information), if not precisely prohibitionary or restrictive. Third, the demand that citizens enjoy does not produce actual enjoyment in the sense of happiness or satisfaction; indeed, there was something faintly absurd in the president’s insistence that traumatized and terrifed Americans buy airplane tickets and take vacations and enjoy it; normally pleasant activities took on the character of laborious (and perhaps terrifying, in the case of fying) national duties. Other instances of this American “society of enjoyment” are not hard to come by, from the insistence on self- esteem and destigmatization in educa- tional structures to the fundamental contradiction in contemporary American culture between a desire for unlimited consumption and the hard fact that one cannot sell any product to people who have literally eaten themselves to death. The putative epidemic of obesity gives a nice example of the deadlock that seems inherent to a society of enjoyment. The imperative to enjoy and indulge (in food, for example) also carries multiple simultaneous charges of guilt (from

famous essay on the “mirror stage”), New Lacanians have tended to privilege the real, enjoyment (jouissance), and drive.

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“Why am I not enjoying this food more?” to “How much weight am I gain- ing?”). The end result is that an individual subject is compelled to indulge and to feel bad about it (which in turn leads to further opportunities for consump- tion of goods and services, from gym memberships to bariatric surgery). For both food consumption and contemporary practices of self- esteem-based edu- cation, the point is not at all to affrm the individual’s liberty—both actually function as ways of regulating behavior. For critics like McGowan who have a signifcant debt to Marxism, the overall point here is hard to miss: a society of enjoyment is more conducive to the needs of capitalism (especially post- industrial capitalism) precisely because it enshrines the principle of constant, maximal consumption. Moreover, the overall tenor of the society of enjoyment (“you deserve a break today—at McDonald’s”) is experienced as defance of the system, a break from the demands of capitalist labor, albeit a break that involves the demands of capitalist consumption. But McGowan is also a New Lacanian, and his explanation of the society of enjoyment is particularly fne when he turns to psychoanalysis and discusses the role of the superego. One would naturally assume that the superego would stand on the side of prohibition and authority and restraint, in stark opposi- tion to the society of enjoyment. The superego does indeed exist in order to seek out the transgressive desires for enjoyment that the subject may conceal. At frst glance, the superego works like an investigating offcer of the law. But McGowan notes that the character of the superego is quite different from the putatively neutral character of the law and authority. The superego is not like the neutral and abstract policeman on the corner, who ensures that everyone “behaves themselves” in public, but is closer in spirit to a nosy old gossip who spies on all the neighbors with binoculars and peeps through windows at night, always in pursuit of a little bit of juicy gossip, evidence of someone else’s transgression. It is worth noting immediately that the investigative measures taken after September 11th are, in fact, closer in spirit to this neighbor than to the neutral law of public observation, including the possibility of exam- ining video-rental records and books checked out from the library.5 When Lacanians refer to the “obscene reverse side of the law,” this is what they are talking about—the law constantly exceeds its own neutrality, turns toward enjoyment—the nosy neighbor, caught peeking through the blinds, will always

5. In the years since I frst wrote this article, the obscenity of even the legal and visible part of the US response to terrorism has only increased, including the use of back- scatter radiation body scanners that effectively take a nude photograph of every airline traveller; agents at Heathrow and at Miami airports have been disciplined after using the devices to ogle or humiliate coworkers, lending credence to Jeffrey Goldberg, writ- ing for The Atlantic, who called the scanners “Dick-Measuring Devices,” prompting a TSA agent to exclaim “That’s the truth.” (See http://www.theatlantic.com/national/ archive/2010/10/for-the-frst-time-the-tsa-meets-resistance/65390/.)

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claim to be acting in the interests of the community, but this claim hides his own obscene pleasure at looking into other people’s houses. “In this sense,” writes McGowan, “there is no Law that simply restrains enjoyment. The Law cannot escape the enjoyment that drives it—the enjoyment manifested in the form of the legal imperative—and this aspect of the Law is located in the superego” (29). This is not a revision of Freud, who also notes that the super- ego draws its energy from, is motivated by (and can even act as the representa- tive of) the id, the seat of enjoyment. This view of the law as fundamentally obscene (it enjoys its investigations, much like the peeping neighbor) points to a concomitant obscenity on the part of the ordinary citizens who are policed by that obscenely inquisitive law—they might enjoy it, too. They might enjoy their own obedience to the law (as under fascism), or they might merely enjoy vicariously the investiga- tive prying of the superegoic law, such as the endless parade of humiliating (and absolutely irrelevant) revelations about the personal lives of celebrities and politicians. In other words, not only is the superegoic law motivated by an obscene enjoyment, but we also enjoy the spectacle of the transformation of neutral, public law into this obscene, prying, gossipy law—we enjoy see- ing the superego frantically put to work, and watching its attempts to police enjoyment be turned into obscene spectacles for our own idiotic enjoyment (one might think of a television show such as Cops, or the endless series of faux courtroom shows, such as Judge Judy, all using the apparently neutral and impersonal structures of law in order to reveal intimate enjoyments and revel in the humiliating spectacle that results). Finally, what happens to authority in the society of enjoyment? McGowan makes further use of Lacanian theory in pointing to the fgure of the “anal father” as the authority fgure that emblematizes the society of enjoyment (it is worth pointing out that Žižek indicates that the fgure of the anal father is a defnitive symptom of postmodernism, as well).6 The “anal father” is also called the “obscene father of enjoyment,” and this is indeed his principal char- acter—although he may appear at frst glance as a traditional authority fgure, he is ultimately revealed (as was, for instance, Bill Clinton) to be a creature of obscene, incomprehensible enjoyment. Such enjoyment is no longer considered an impediment to authority—indeed, it is almost required by contemporary neoliberalism’s insistence on truly universal enjoyment, even if the waning culture of prohibition decries it. Leaders must lead by example. The examples I cite here are inevitably American ones, since America has gone farther down the path of a society of obligatory enjoyment than any other, but there is little doubt that this feature of American society has been making inroads around the world for the last half century or more

6. See Slavoj Žižek, Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (New York: Routledge, 2001) 124–27.

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(commanded enjoyment would appear to be an inherent feature of neoliberal globalization). In Italy, it currently takes a particularly visible form in adver- tising slogans that begin with the informal and intimate imperative goditi (enjoy) followed by a direct object: goditi la vita, goditi le tue vacanze, goditi la pensione (enjoy life, enjoy your vacation, enjoy your retirement), followed metonymically by the product that will allow you to enjoy your life, your vacation, your retirement. Even ostensibly antibusiness or anticapitalist ven- tures come to make use of the same formulation: goditi l’ambiente! (enjoy the environment). In short, over the last ffty years, enjoyment has come to be seen as a paramount value. Why must you preserve the environment? Not because you are told to do so by an authority or prohibited from despoiling it by laws and regulatory agencies or even because it is impersonally right, but for the sake of your own enjoyment.

Everything Is Soup! Let’s return now to the scene I cited earlier from The Nonexistent Knight, the banquet scene. As I mentioned, traditional Italian readings have, in fact, focused on the novels of the trilogy as effectively allegories about the subject of contemporary capitalism, particularly about various forms of alienation— the novels, after all, revolve around a subject divided from himself (quite literally, in the case of The Cloven Viscount) or from his world (as in The Baron in the Trees).7 Of course, that alienation could just as easily be read psychoanalytically, with the various fgures representing different forms of the split subject (again, the cloven Viscount Medardo offers us an alarm- ingly literal version of the divided or barred subject). Agilulfo stands here as the most radically alienated fgure, so radically cut off from his own being that he no longer exists. However, it is apparent that a traditional Marxist

7. See, for instance, Franco Di Carlo’s Come leggere I nostri antenati (Milan: Mursia, 1978). This series tends to offer a highly simplifed “degree zero” of criticism and interpretation, but even here Il visconte dimezzato represents “l’allegoria dell’uomo contemporaneo, diviso, alienato . . .” (61) [the allegory of modern man, divided, alien- ated . . .], while Il cavaliere inesistente appears in “un momento storico . . . molto più problematico” [in a much more problematic historical moment] when the individual is losing “la propria identità in una situazione sociale sempre più caotica e alienante” [his identity in an ever- more chaotic and alienating social situation]—that is, the in- cipient “boom economico” (62) [economic boom]. J. R. Woodhouse noted the same a decade earlier, citing several critics who read Agilulfo as an example of “modern man’s alienation from his fellows” in Italo Calvino: A Reappraisal and Appreciation of the Trilogy (Hull: University of Hull Press, 1968) 28.

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or Freudian reading only takes us so far in this novel, precisely because nei- ther Marx nor Freud anticipated a society of enjoyment that would neatly undercut their impetus toward resistance (for Marx, of course, capitalism was linked principally to suffering and misery, the driving motor behind revolu- tionary impulses; for Freud, society was the agency of repression, the driving motor of mental illness). But Calvino, writing in Italy in 1959, had a better vantage point from which to witness not only the very, very rapid emergence of industrial capitalism, but to see the ways in which it was turning toward a “society of enjoyment.” Already by the banquet scene, the reader knows that Agilulfo stands on the side of the law, the apparently neutral code that regulates public behavior. Cal- vino offers a parody of the Renaissance epic in which passion, virtue, revenge, chivalry, and the rest are all subjected to a meticulous corporate bureau- cracy. For instance, Rimbaldo, a young man intent on avenging his father, the Marquis Gherardo di Rossiglione, who was killed in battle by “quel cane pagano dell’argalif Isoarre” (964) [that pagan dog, the Argalif Isoarre] learns from Agilulfo that the procedure for seeking vengeance is “quite simple.” As Agilulfo explains the bureaucratic procedure, his voice takes on “un certo calore” (964) [a certain warmth], the only warmth that he is really capable of: “Devi fare domanda alla Sovrintendenza ai Duelli, alle Vendette e alle Macchie dell’Onore, specifcando i motivi della tua richiesta, e sarà studiato come meglio metterti in condizione d’avere la soddisfazione voluta” (964) [you must apply to the Offce of the Superintendent of Duels, Vendettas, and Stains of Honor, specifying the motivations for your request, and the Offce will study how best to place in the condition of having the desired satisfaction]. When Rimbaldo arrives at the Superintendent’s offce, however, he discovers that regulations will not permit him to kill the “pagan dog” who laid low his father, but since his father was a general, he can take revenge by taking out three majors or, if he prefers, four captains (967). What we should note here is that bureaucracy stands as the impediment to Rimbaldo’s satisfaction (that is, it blocks his enjoyment), but that Agilulfo already demonstrates that the overly obedient subject might begin to enjoy those same clinical and bureau- cratic regulations, memorizing the rules and procedures with “un certo calore.” We might note, however, that there is already a visible difference between the near- total neutrality of Agilulfo, this superego that cannot enjoy, and the offcials who work in the Superintendent’s offce. The warmth that comes into Agilulfo’s voice explaining the regulations is a refection of his passion for exact order, for knowing the rules and regulation with precision. The offcials, however, demonstrate the “obscene reverse side of the law”—they haggle with Rimbaldo over the value of his father, who is not worth an Arga- lif, and the situation is “resolved” (for the offcials) precisely through petty

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gossip and drunken debauchery rather than an impartial application of the law’s neutrality:

Ma uno di quei funzionari, che era stato fn allora col capo spro- fondato nelle carte, s’alzò giulivo: – Tutto risolto! Tutto risolto! . . . Ulivieri, l’altro giorno, credendo i suoi due zii morti in batta- glia, li ha vendicati! Invece erano rimasti ubriachi sotto un tavolo! Ci troviamo con questi due vendetta di zio in più, un bel pasticcio. Ora tutto va a posto: una vendetta di zio noi la contiamo come mezza vendetta di padre: è come se ci avessimo una vendetta di padre in bianco, già eseguita. (967)

But one of the functionaries, who had kept his head buried in his papers up until then, sat up jubilantly: “It’s all taken care of! All taken care of! Ulivieri, the other day, thinking that his two uncles had died in battle, avenged them! Instead, they were lying drunk underneath a table! We’ve got these two extra uncle-vendettas, a fne mess. But now, everything’s sett- led: one uncle’s vendetta equals half a father’s vendetta: it’s like we had a father’s vendetta in the clear, already carried out.

This kind of “obscene” thinking, in which two unrelated “uncle vendettas” can equal a “father vendetta,” all of it arranged for bureaucratic ease rather than the principle behind the law—in short, arranged in order to maximize the enjoyment of the law—typifes the thinking of almost all the minor characters in the novel. Perhaps we might even say that bureaucracy is nothing but the law transformed into a form that can be enjoyed, albeit in a perverse and often sadistic form. Anyone who has been to the DMV is surely aware that the actual functioning of a bureaucratic institution has little to do with the Enlightenment principles of universal rights that subtend the law; it appears instead as a series of arbitrary rules and procedures designed to frustrate the citizen. Far from being an impersonal machinery of the state, one cannot help but suspect that the functionaries behind the counter harbor a sadistic enjoy- ment of precisely that frustration. This is why Agilulfo is constantly perceived as an irritant, “disliked by all,” since he stands for precisely the “impersonal machinery of the state.” He wants everything to be done by the book—“[lui] fcca dappertutto il naso che non ha” (966) [he sticks that nose that he doesn’t have in everywhere], in the memorable phrase of one - bureaucrat. Again, from the point of view of neoliberalism and capitalist growth, the problem with the Enlightenment neu- trality of the law is that it functions through restraint and prohibition, which are not as well suited to consumer expenditure as, say, excess and commanded

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enjoyment. In most instances, of course, this superegoic agency of neutral law is easily corrupted, easily made to enjoy—but Agilulfo is defned precisely through his resistance to normal enjoyment. The only thing he seems to really enjoy is his own perfect obedience to the letter of the law. The confict between Agilulfo (the society of prohibition) and the other knights (the nascent society of enjoyment) comes to a head, as I have already indicated, in the banquet scene, which in turn produces the central narrative confict of the novel. Even in their table manners, Calvino offers a parodic view of impersonal bureaucracy on the one hand, and the stain of obscene enjoyment on the other. This is how the knights eat:

Le portate sono le solite dell’esercito: tacchino farcito, oca allo spiedo, brasato di bue, maialini di latte, anguille, orate. I valletti non han fatto a tempo a porgere i vassoi che i paladini ci si buttano addosso, arraffano con le mani, sbranano, si sbrodolano le corazze, schizzano salsa dappertutto. (1010–11)

The courses were the typical ones for the army: stuffed turkey, goose on the spit, braised oxen, suckling pig, eels, sea bream. The valets haven’t even had time to offer the platters before the pala- dins throw themselves on top of them, rummage about with their hands, tear the food apart, cover their cuirasses in soup, squirt sauce everywhere.

Let me suggest that the word “soup” in its various forms (zuppa, minestra, brodo, sbrodolarsi, inzuppare, and so on—English unfortunately lacks most of these terms based on soup—to “ensoup” oneself, to “brothify,” and the like) has a particularly important function here. That is, it stands precisely for the “stain of obscene enjoyment,” the external mark that indicates a supposedly pure and impersonal principle (the knight in shining armor, the law) actually conceals a secret enjoyment. Happily, the “stain” takes a completely literal form in Calvino’s novel, for within moments, the knights at the banquet are literally soaking in this soup, their armor spotted, stained, and dripping with soup and sauce. (I believe this equation could be extended throughout Calvino’s work— soup always stands for obscene, messy enjoyment, from the lunar goop in “La distanza della Luna” [“The Distance of the Moon”] and “La luna molle” [“The Soft Moon”] to the sauces, soups, and moles in which Olivia loses herself in Sotto il sole giaguaro [Under the Jaguar Sun]. Contrary to the bulk of Calvino criticism, which treats Calvino as a paragon of Enlightenment rationality and repression, this sensual enjoyment returns repeatedly in his work.) The other character in Il cavaliere inesistente persistently associated with soup is, of course, Gurdulù, Agilulfo’s squire who always loses himself in his

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surroundings, including in a vat of soup. He rolls about in the vat until he emerges “sbrodolato di zuppa di cavoli dalla testa ai piedi, chiazzato, unto . . . gridando: – Tutto è zuppa! – a braccia avanti come nuotasse . . .” (996) [covered in cabbage soup from head to toe, spattered, greased . . . scream- ing, “Everything is soup!” arms outstretched as if he were swimming . . .]. Gurdulù’s obscenity will take more literal forms later in the novel, when he engages in an all- night orgy with serving girls while his master chastely fol- lows the precepts of courtly love in order to avoid sexual contact with the widow Priscilla. Agilulfo, on the other hand, doesn’t eat at all: he meticulously divides and subdivides the food he is given, moves it from one plate to another, stacks balls of bread in pyramids or arranges them in ordered rows—all the while correct- ing the boastful stories of the soupy all around him. He does this until someone turns the tables on him; an unknown voice at dinner suggests that at least one of Agilulfo’s stories is an exaggeration. This accusation is tantamount to a claim that the abstract and neutral law conceals a petty pleasure. Agilulfo was knighted for having saved Sophronia, the virgin daughter of the king of Scotland, from rape. One should note that the story itself revolves precisely around the question of enjoyment and the stain, the assertion that there was no stain of defowering, no sexual or sadistic enjoyment provided to the two brigands who assaulted Sophronia. The young man, Torrismund of Corn- wall, who accuses Agilulfo, asserts something shocking—more shocking than the suggestion that the meticulous and niggling Agilulfo has exaggerated: he asserts that Sophronia was no virgin, but, in fact, Torrismund’s own mother. The story that emerges is another “soupy” tale of obscene enjoyment (for Calvino, “soup” seems to always be associated with the loss of clear and discrete boundaries, those neat geometric lines that make the universe com- prehensible; that same geometry, however, renders the world sterile, cold, unbearable). Barely pubescent, the young Sophronia would go and play with the knights of the Order of the Holy Grail away from parental surveil- lance—and she eventually returned from these “games” pregnant. Again the function of the “anal father” appears, as sources of authority are revealed to be steeped in enjoyment. Charlemagne is initially perturbed by this story, since the knights of the Order are bound by an oath of chastity. Torrismund explains, however, that his mother never claimed that any particular knight was his father—she instead taught him to “rispettare come padre il Sacro Ordine nel suo complesso” (1018) [respect as my father the Holy Order as a whole]. There are two points to notice here. The frst is that normally clear boundaries have dissolved once again into a soup of enjoyment. Charlemagne notes that “una castità violata presuppone un violatore” (1017) [a chastity violated presupposes a violator]. But the story we are actually given eschews this clear boundary, preferring another orgy like Gurdulù’s. The second point

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is the way the verb rispettare (respect) works here, as an ironic deformation of paternal authority. That deformation reaches its maximum in the next line as the Emperor himself uses the obscene reverse side of the law to justify the obscenity: although individual knights of the Holy Order may have to swear a vow of chastity, there is no such vow binding the Order as a whole. In other words, collective molestation is permissible. This is precisely the enjoyment that becomes possible when the law turns into the petty bureaucracy that I referred to earlier. Just as importantly, Charlemagne here reveals himself as the “anal father” McGowan and Žižek describe, an authority fgure who aims at facilitating rather than prohibiting debauchery and obscenity. Charlemagne hastens to reassure Torrismund that his orgiastic origin won’t necessarily be held against him, a reassurance that further dissolves the clear boundaries of paternity, law and authority: “Anch’io ho riconosciuto tutti i fgli avuti da concubine, ed erano molti, e certo qualcuno non sarà neanche mio” (1018) [Even I recognized all the children I had by concubines, and there were a lot of them, and for sure some aren’t even mine]. For Agilulfo, the consequences are serious: in yet another biting parody of the “obscene underside of the Law,” Calvino informs the reader that saving a virgin daughter of royal blood will earn you an immediate knighthood—sav- ing an already defowered daughter of royal blood, however, will only get you a mention in the knight’s chronicle and three months’ bump in pay. In short, Agilulfo’s entire symbolic identity has been put at risk: if he cannot disprove Torrismund’s accusation, he cannot be recognized as a knight. As Charlemagne says, “Se questo giovane dice il vero, non potrei tenervi in ser- vizio, anzi non potrei considerarvi sotto nessun punto di vista . . .” (1017) [If this young man is speaking the truth, I could no longer keep you in service, indeed, I could no longer consider you for any purpose . . .]. And as he speaks, Charlemagne is once again touched by the stain of enjoyment: “Non poteva impedirsi dal dare al suo discorso un timbro di sbrigativa soddisfazione, come a dire: «Vedete che abbiamo trovato un il sistema di liberarci di questo sec- catore?» ” (1017) [Charlemagne couldn’t resist giving to his speech a timbre of quick satisfaction, as if to say: “See how we’ve found a way of freeing ourselves of this bore?”]. Finally, the knights will be able to eat their soup and tell their tall tales in peace; indeed, they will be able to do better, for there is a fundamental trans- formation at work in the banquet scene. Agilulfo is the superego, the pure force of the law; the knights cannot make him relax, “take it easy,” or engage in the petty sadistic enjoyments of bureaucracy. Agilulfo is unbending. But his activity can still be turned toward a culture of enjoyment in precisely the man- ner that McGowan describes. The neutral agency of the superegoic law can be turned into a spectacle for them to enjoy. The private truth of Agilulfo’s public face has been uncovered, and it is the truth of obscene enjoyment (even if it is

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not his own). The discovery of Charlemagne and the other knights is that we must fnd the superego’s enjoyment: either the superego itself enjoys (its own prying investigations, the dirty gossip about the neighbors) or we must enjoy ourselves the superego’s frantic investigative activity as it attempts to preserve its neutral face—in short, put the apparent neutrality of the law to our own obscene ends (as we enjoy the embarrassing revelations that turn up while watching an episode of Cops). From what McGowan describes, we should expect the remainder of the novel to be a series of increasingly embarrassing (and enjoyable) revelations of enjoyment.

The Stain of Enjoyment This is precisely how the rest of the novel plays out. Agilulfo’s investigations reveal that Sophronia is in fact still a virgin—but as Charlemagne arrives to verify her virginity, they fnd her sleeping with none other than Torrismund, her own son (he does not know her real identity when he falls in love with her). Of course, she cannot be his mother, since she was a virgin when he slept with her. But just as bad, they turn out to be brother and older sister, Sophronia, or rather half- brother (he is the son of the Queen of Scotland and, yes, the Holy Order of the Grail—while the King of Scotland was off at war). Charlemagne immediately turns again to the inverse side of the law, attempting to justify their obscene enjoyment. “L’incesto c’è sempre, però, tra fratellastro e sorellastra, non è poi dei più gravi . . .” (1055) [It’s still incest, however, between half- brother and half- sister, it’s not the most serious kind . . .]. But no!, exclaims Torrismund, who happens to have learned that Soph- ronia is the illegitimate daughter of the King of Scotland and a farmer’s wife. As Torrismund puts it: “Figlia tu del re di Scozia e d’una contadina, io della regina e del Sacro Ordine, non abbiamo nessun legame di sangue, ma soltanto il legame amoroso” (1056) [You the daughter of the King of Scotland and a peasant woman, I, son of the Queen and the Holy Order—we have no ties of blood, but only of love]. What is going on here is a peculiar kind of mathematical operation. The original obscene enjoyment, “foul incest” as Torrismund says, is “mitigated” through a series of revelations, which in turn reveal the mitigation isn’t so mitigating after all. Each revelation partially mitigates that original sin, as mother- son incest becomes sibling incest, which then becomes half- sibling incest, and then not incest at all. But at what cost? At the cost of the spread of obscene enjoyment, enjoyment that spreads precisely at the level of authority. Who is implicated at the end? There was no incest, it is true, but there is still the collective sexual activity of the Holy Order of the Sacred Grail, the mari- tal infdelity of the Queen with the entire Order, and the matching infdelity of her husband. Charlemagne’s judgment, the “anal emperor”? “Mi pare che tutto si risolva per il meglio” (1056) [It seems to me that everything is working

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out for the best]. And what is Agilulfo’s place in this soupy universe, where all fgures of authority—indeed, the universe itself—eventually seem to be “contaminated” by enjoyment? Agilulfo fees the scene of incest (still believing that Torrismund is Sophronia’s son, and that his quest to prove her virginity to the Emperor is doomed), and when Rimbaldo tracks him down, he fnds only a pile of white, spotless armor and a note from Agilulfo bequeathing the armor to him. The armor, as Calvino notes, is now empty, truly empty, “vuota anche di quel qualcosa che era chiamato il cavaliere Agilulfo e che adesso è dissolto come una goccia nel mare” (1057) [empty even of that something that had been called the knight Agilulfo, who was now dissolved like a drop in the ocean]. It is surely no accident that we fnd another image of liquid dissolution (a term that nicely combines the idea of liquid and obscene vice) here. Calvino elaborated for much of his career a tension and confict between the disorder of the phenomenal world (persistently metaphorized as soup or ocean, as in his essay on “Il mare dell’oggettività”) and the attempts of a rational mind (meta- phorized, for instance, in the fgure of a crystal or a chessboard) to impose a comprehensible order on the soupy mess of the world. There’s no question that the action of the novel also plays out along these lines, that Agilulfo stands for any kind of general and abstract order, while, for instance, Gurdulù func- tions as an image of the world as a mess (“tutto è zuppa!”). This opposition between order and chaos represents a critical consensus about the novel and Calvino’s work more generally and is certainly true—what has been ignored, however (and this is generally true of Calvino studies, not just this novel) is the accompanying element of obscenity: the knights covered in sauce and soup, the Scottish aristocracy similarly covered in their own perverse enjoyment. Every authoritative fgure in the novel becomes tainted with this soup—even Agilulfo, frst, because he is put to work uncovering and investigating people’s intimate and private transgressions, the classic function of the superego in “the emerging society of enjoyment,” and second, because the fate of his armor reveals the inevitable fate of the neutral law in a society of enjoyment. Rim- baldo rides into battle wearing Agilulfo’s beautifully immaculate white armor, which has always remained free of every stain, but when he returns,

La candida intatta impeccabile armatura di Agilulfo adesso è tutta incrostata di terra, spruzzata di sangue nemico, costellata d’am- maccature, bugni, sgraff, slabbri, il cimiero mezzo spennato, l’elmo storto, lo scudo scrostato proprio in mezzo al misterioso stemma. Or il giovane la sente come l’armatura sua . . . il primo disagio provato a indossarla è ormai lontana . . . (1058)

Agilulfo’s untouched, white, impeccable armor is now all encrusted with dirt, sprayed with enemy blood, studded with dents, bumps,

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scratches, slashes, the plume half stripped of feathers, the helmet on crooked, the shield scraped away right in the middle of that mysterious coat of arms. Now the young man feels like it’s really his armor . . . the initial unease that he felt trying it on is by now far away . . .

It is precisely this armor, now visibly covered in the stain of violent and pas- sionate enjoyment, that enables Rimbaldo to seduce , the woman warrior he has pursued throughout the novel and who has spurned him in order to pursue, impossibly, Agilulfo. In short, the armor facilitates precisely another perversity, another obscenity: Rimbaldo can make love to Bradamante because this armor, stained with desire, makes her believe he is Agilulfo. What Rimbaldo feared most at the beginning of the novel has come true. As Gurdulù moves toward him, arms outstretched, shouting “Everything is soup!” Rim- baldo becomes terrifed. He feels the presence of “un’immensa minestra senza forma in cui tutto si sfaceva e tingeva di sé ogni altra cosa” (996) [an immense, shapeless soup in which everything dissolved and stained everything else] and is about to shout for help when he sees Agilulfo and his pristine white armor. Even then, Agilulfo appeared as an absence, as the knight who was not there, but his animated armor could still function as a reef, a barrier to the stain of enjoyment. Now that armor is, precisely, undone and stained by everything else, and that fnal barrier against the sea of enjoyment has given way: every- thing is soup, as Gurdulù says.

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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Noé, Simonetta. “La parola ordinatrice: Italo Calvino da ‘Le cosmicomiche’ a ‘Le città invisibili’.” Il cristallo 1 (1982): 79–98. Woodhouse, J. R. Italo Calvino: A Reappraisal and Appreciation of the Tril- ogy. Hull: U of Hull P, 1968. Wright, Simona. “Italo Calvino e la ricerca dell’ordine nella molteplicità.” Italian Quarterly 129 (1996): 59–76. Žižek, Slavoj. Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. New York: Routledge, 2001.